Training and collaboration
Fiona Raby studied architecture and Computer Related Design at the Royal College of Art, where she helped establish the CRD Research Studio. Her collaboration with Anthony Dunne is associated with speculative design. Their joint work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
Wikipedia describes her as a British artist, born in 1963. At the Royal College of Art her course was an MPhil in Computer Related Design, completed after her architecture studies. In 2001 she was shortlisted for the Perrier-Jouët design prize.
A practice across institutions
Raby taught and conducted research at the Royal College of Art from 1994 to 2015 before moving her teaching practice with Dunne to The New School in New York. Their publications include Design Noir and Speculative Everything. Teaching, writing and studio work form connected parts of her career.
Wikipedia says she left the Royal College of Art to focus on her partnership with Dunne & Raby, and that she also served as professor of industrial design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She and Dunne moved their teaching from the Royal College of Art to Parsons in New York, and were appointed professors of Design and Emerging Technology at The New School, which includes Parsons School of Design. Her current title is University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry at The New School.
The publications it lists are Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects (Birkhäuser, 2001) and Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction and Social Dreaming (MIT Press, 2013), both with Dunne. It also lists their essay “Between Reality and the Impossible”, in the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne 2010 publication, and her contribution to Darkitecture: Learning Architecture for the Twenty-First Century (2013), with Paola Antonelli, Emma Dexter and Iwona Blazwick.
How to approach the work
Approach an individual proposal by identifying the situation it presents and the assumptions it asks a viewer to reconsider. Then examine what its form contributes beyond an accompanying explanation. This is a useful way to study the relationship between design and inquiry without deciding in advance that the work must either solve a practical problem or abandon practical concerns entirely.
